My SSHRC postdoc in Cinema and Media Studies at York University has ended anti-climatically, where most of the archives I was to work in over the last two years remain shuttered. This Fall I officially became an Adjunct Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at Carleton University. This institutional affiliation allows me to apply for research grants and provides some minimal institutional support, but it is an unpaid position. I’ll continue to work as a contract instructor at Carleton as well, teaching courses on a contract to contract basis while I continue my search for full-time employment.
The Sexuality Studies Association 2022 program will launch in May, but we already have two wonderful events lined up: a keynote lecture titled Grappling with Care: Femme Emotional Labour, Somatic Politics, and the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus by Dr. Ann Cvetkovich and a poetry plenary organized by Dr. Ricky Varghese. At this tenth annual conference participants from across the world will also present nearly fifty papers on the cutting edge of sexuality and gender diversity scholarship!
Dr. Emma McKenna and I have
published our chapter “Lessons Learned, Lessons Shared: Doing Research in Collaboration with Sex Workers and Sex Worker Organizations” in the anthology Facilitating Community Research for Social Change: Case Studies in Qualitative, Arts-Based and Visual Research edited by Casey Burkholder, Funké Aladejebi, & Joshua Schwab-Cartasand. The book chapter chronicles the methodological questions that grappled with while doing a recent qualitative research project in collaboration with activists from POWER. A virtual book launch event hosted by the book’s editors is scheduled for April 18. A digital copy of the chapter will be available on my academia.edu page in April for anyone interested.
I was asked to participate as a special guest for Maggie’s Book Club, a new project launched by Canada’s oldest/longest running sex worker advocacy project. I’ll be talking about my chapter in the Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis and my ongoing research on sex workers’ data privacy and security in aftermath of the raid on Rentboy.com. The virtual event on April 28th is open to current, former, and aspiring sex workers and the people who love them.
Lastly, I’m wrapping up my two courses for the Winter 2022 semester at Carleton, “Introduction to LGBTQ Studies” and “Social & Political Movements”. With any luck, I’ll be teaching them again for the next academic year, but nothing is guaranteed. In the meantime I continue to organize with my union as a member of the Executive as we prepare for bargaining. Our collective agreement expires at the end of August and we are preparing for an all out fight with the employer who has for years underpaid and undervalued our work.